What are BICS and CALP? | Colorín Colorado
I will explain how I will support my English Learners in my future classroom.
"Cognitive Academic Language Proficiency (CALP) is where it is a deep understanding of the writer's native language in academic language. The ESL student could take up to 7 years to be fluent in the academic language.
BICS is Basic Interpersonal Communication Skills and the opposite of CALP. It is the development ESL students have in communication fluency. It deals with non-verbal clues that support the conversation with instant feedback.
By using these two ideas above in my classroom, I would have the students doing role play. Using CALP we will read about weather and then could see this becoming a game of charades. Nonverbal clues involve pointing to the sky, sun, etc. Acting out rain or thunder or another way of describing the weather today with an ESL partner. AND another classroom idea for these two ideas...page 27 from our text... "◼ Prepare a set of sentences. Each sentence has two
versions, A and B, which should mean the same thing,
but use different wording.
◼ Write version A and version B of each sentence onto
separate cards. Give each of your students a card.
◼ The students walk around the classroom asking other
students what is on their card until they find their partner
who has the matching card.
◼ When all the students have found a
partner, check that they have found the
correct partner. Then collect the cards and
distribute them again" Instread of repeating, I would have the pairs find a way to role play or use communication fluency and/or non-verbal clues to tell what is on the cards. "